Healthcare entities such as hospitals, clinics, or clinical groups often employ local information systems to store and manage patient information. If a first healthcare entity having a first local information system refers a patient to a second healthcare entity having a second local information system, personnel at the first healthcare entity typically manually retrieves patient information from the first information system and stores the patient information on a storage device such as a compact disk (CD). The personnel then transport the storage device to the second healthcare entity, which employs personnel to upload the patient information from the storage device onto the second information system.